Scout leader had more than 10,000 child porn files

Jessica Grewal
Senior Reporter APN Newsdesk NSW Bureau
Working from Sydney, Jessica specialises in crime/court reporting, filing for APN’s regional mastheads in Northern NSW as well as providing national content for the group.
She was previously Chief Reporter at the Fraser Coast Chronicle in Hervey Bay, Queensland where she grew up and trained.
Early in her career, she was named Queensland Young Journalist of the Year at the Clarion Awards.
More recently, she was finalist at the 2013 Kennedy Awards for Excellence in NSW Journalism in both the...

Trusted by Ipswich parents to be a role model for their sons, Brock Emil Dittman was living a different life behind closed doors, building a depraved library of 10,000 child pornography images and sharing fantasies about his "perfect boy" victim with like-minded online predators.

Brisbane Supreme Court heard on Tuesday, Dittman, 32, was caught during a 2015 Crime and Corruption Commission operation targeting a file sharing software program that requires users to enter a password before they can access pictures and videos.

Dittman was said to have become increasingly obsessed with viewing and sharing child sex images depicting boys, generally aged 10-14, performing sexual acts and being abused. At one point he made 193 files available to 76 users.

The images and videos shared did not involve any Scouts.

Instead, they were of unknown victims of similar age, downloaded from the darkest corners of the internet and stored for Dittman's sexual gratification.

Asked in an online chat to describe his "perfect boy", Dittman replied "fat of course ... chubby around the face, thick thighs ... I like paler skin ... probably not the best description but I can see him in my mind".

In another conversation he said he was interested in obtaining images of boys as young as six.

Commonwealth Prosecutor Daniel Whitmore said when police raided Dittman's home and discovered more than 10,000 child sex-related images, he told them he was "trying not to view so much".

He said while Dittman gave his passwords to police so they could assume his identity and catch other predators, it was "abundantly clear" the former Scout leader had a sexual interest in children and had "significantly contributed" to the supply and demand of the child pornography market.

Defence barrister Timothy Ryan described his client as a socially and sexually naive "loner" who became entangled in the "seductive" world of the internet.

He said his client was "thoroughly ashamed" of his behaviour and made frank and extensive admissions to the police.

"Like many others who engage in this conduct, he didn't give much thought to the significant consequences of his actions," Mr Ryan said.

"Certainly once he was detected, his cycle of viewing this material was broken ... he can see how damaging this is."

Mr Ryan said his client had been assaulted in jail and was seeking mental health support.

Justice David Thomas said child pornography was "not a victimless crime" and looking at a sample of the images tendered in court it was "hard to imagine how these poor, defenceless children can ever have a normal life".

"It is a disgraceful crime... it creates a market for the continued exploitation of children," Justice Thomas said

"It is a blot on our community. It is inexcusable."

Dittman was sentenced to a total of four years in jail. He will be eligible to apply for parole in December, 2018.